“Your optionality is an illusion”

More than 60 founders took the time to answer the additional free-form question (“What else has stressed you out?”). In their comments, many people emphasized and provided additional detail on some of the topics shown above, but several founders also pointed out additional issues. Reading through all of the comments has been very enlightening (and in a few cases humbling). Here’s a small selection of the answers:

"The big egos"

"Everything takes 4x more time than initially thought"

"Associates who constantly want calls without involving a partner who can actually get the deal done (or not)."

“It's venture capital but I have the feeling no VC will take risks. There is always a reason not to invest.”

"Rejection from seed investors saying 'come back once you have X' (where X is in essence enough to raise Series A)."

"Some investors haven't mentioned at all that they invested in similar company. I found that after the meeting."

"Startup/investor fit. Finding people who understand the business and can support / advise us going forward, vs. wasting time talking to people who don't understand the venture potential of the business."

"Investors using their lawyers as bad cops."

"Radio silence and/or stringing me along, in service of ‘maintaining optionality’. Hint: if you do this, I won't come back to you next time I'm raising. Your optionality is an illusion."

"Had an investor back out after a long negotiation that culminated in a SIGNED term sheet. This is outright destructive, and all but killed the company."

The next question was “Which of the following things have happened to you already?”. Here are the results:

The final question was: “Anything else you want to point out? Any other input on what VCs can do to make fundraising less stressful for founders?”. More than 45 people answered this question. The comments included:

"If you are not interested, say it right away (I had some of the best meetings with VCs that said it out early in the conversation)."

"Don't waste our time or yours. Be very upfront about interest or not. Give succinct feedback, and don't sugar-coat why you're reacting the way you are."

"Had an investor back out after a long negotiation that culminated in a SIGNED (but obviously non-binding) term sheet. This is outright destructive, and all but killed the company. Never, ever, ever do this to a young company. I literally hate this firm now. They are the worst!"

"If you're transparent, direct, clear and fair, I will respect you and come back to you in the future. If you're weaselly, arrogant, or try to manipulate me, I won't."

What are the take-aways?

1) Founders understand that fundraising takes time and they can deal with rejections. But they hate being left in the dark.

The top issues, that is the issues which founders said suck the most, are:

"Not knowing where I am in the process, i.e. no ‘yes’ but also no clear ‘no’"

Interestingly these issues are precisely the ones that could be avoided if VCs did a better job. In contrast, things that cost time and energy but are a natural part of the fundraising process – creating a deck, preparing numbers, having many meetings, getting rejections – suck significantly less.

This theme – founders can deal with rejections, but they need clarity – is also what has been mentioned the most in the free-form questions and is the clearest take-away of the survey.

To my fellow VCs’ defense, if you get 300 or more inbound requests per month it’s very hard to give each founder a timely response, so unless an investor intentionally strings founders along in order to keep optionality (or the illusion thereof) I don’t want to blame him or her. But knowing that this is the #1 issue which stresses founders in the fundraising process, VCs should try very hard to become as responsive and transparent as possible. For us at Point Nine, these results served as a good reminder that we have to further improve our internal processes to make sure that each and every entrepreneur gets a swift answer from us.

2) Fundraising sucks across all stages

We also asked founders to tell us what stage they’re in. 59% said that the last round they’ve raised (or tried to raise) was a seed round. 30% said Series A, 11% said Series B.

The only question which showed a statistically significant correlation with the stage was the question about “Getting initial meetings”. For earlier-stage founders, getting initial meetings has been significantly harder than for later-stage founders. That doesn’t come as a surprise, and maybe it shows that there’s at least one thing which VCs are good at: Getting their portfolio founders meetings with other VCs. :-)

3) Backing out after a term sheet has been signed is much more common than we thought

In the world of private equity and M&A, signing a term sheet may have a different meaning but I’ve always thought that if a VC signs a term sheet it means they are fully committed to making the investment. And they ought to be. The purpose of the final due diligence that takes place after a term sheet is signed is to rule out “skeletons in the closet”. By the time you sign a term sheet, you should have made up your mind and should be done with your “commercial due diligence”.

Apparently that’s not the case. 14 people, a shocking 14% of the respondents, said they’ve already experienced an investor backing out after a term sheet has been signed. Unless these 14 founders had skeletons in their closets, that’s 14 too many. As one founder said in the comments, if this happens it can kill a company.

Based on these findings, founders are well advised to do more due diligence on their part before they sign a term sheet with a VC. One of the things you should do is ask the VC what kind of due diligence they’re still planning to do after the term sheet is signed.

Huge thanks to all founders who took the time to participate in the survey! If you want to dive in even deeper into the survey results, please drop me a line and I’ll send you the Excel sheet with the complete data set.

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

You create an investor deck and send it to 5-10 VCs that you like (1 week)

You meet the ones that are interested and quickly figure out the 3-4 that are really bullish (1-2 weeks)

You have a few more meetings with those 3-4 VCs and answer their questions (2 weeks)

You negotiate with 2-3 of them and sign a term sheet with your favorite one (a few days)

You hand it over to your lawyer for the final due diligence and the legal paperwork (3-4 weeks)

So ideally it's a couple of trips to Sand Hill Road (or San Francisco or London or Jaegerstrasse) over a period of 4-6 weeks to get a term sheet, and after another 3-4 weeks you've got the money in your bank account.

In practice, things rarely go so smooth. More often than not, raising venture capital is a huge distraction for the founding team. Even if things go reasonably well, it usually means that one of the founders spends half of his time talking to VCs for several weeks – time that he or she can't spend on building the business. If things go less well, it's not only a huge time sink but can also be an extremely stressful experience.

Why is that, and does it have to be this way?

To some extent, it's in the nature of things that convincing other people to give you a lot of money (and to commit to supporting you for the next 10 years) for a small stake in your risky early-stage startup is not an easy feat. The vast majority of startups fail, VCs can invest in only 1% or less of the startups they see, fundraising involves a lot of relationship-building, it's a complex process – that's all pretty obvious so I won't elaborate on that.

To shed some light on that question I put together a short Typeform survey. If you are a founder or CEO and have raised venture capital it would be awesome if you could participate in the survey. It's anonymous and takes only a few minutes to complete (and thanks to Typeform, you can do it on your iPhone :) ). I will share the results in another post shortly.

Thursday, October 08, 2015

Last time we spoke about WHY you should do reference checks and what impact a bad hire can have on your organization. In this second part I’d like to share my personal experience as well as some outcomes that have recently been discussed within the Point Nine family around the HOW.
General thoughts on the HOW:

If you do reference checks, make sure they are one of the last steps of your recruitment process. Because if you do them right (I’ll explain further what that means) it will cost you time. You want to make sure that time is invested in the right candidate.

The number of reference checks people do varies greatly between 1 to 15 checks per person. You want to find inconsistencies within the feedback you receive about the person. Depending on how senior the candidate is, ask for more references. A good start is 2 references for junior/entry roles that you want to increase to 3 to 5 references for middle management positions and 6 to 10 references for a senior leadership position.

Make sure you have a mix of suggested references by the candidate as well some that you happen to know or you proactively approach to give you feedback. A good way to start is with the suggested ones. You can ask those guys who else they find you should talk to. Make sure you still top that up with your own research e.g. via LinkedIn or your personal network.

Now how to do them well?!

Have questions prepared. Make sure you know what to ask rather just go for the “So, tell me something about John” kind of question. Ask specific questions about the candidate. Remember, you want to find inconsistencies! Don’t be okay with foggy answers, worst case rephrase the question.

Try to establish a relationship with the reference you are talking to. Do a video call if possible and try to avoid written references. Take your 2-5 minutes small talk time at the beginning. Why? It’s much harder to lie into your face when I like you :)

Don’t only ask direct peers. It’s much more interesting to talk to people e.g. that got fired by that person (they are usually much more honest and open) or in general someone that has worked below him and got directly impacted by that person. A good mix of people above, around and below works quite well!

Obviously try to avoid asking someone at the current company the person works unless he got recommended by the candidate.

A good way to challenge the integrity upfront is to ask the following question once you’ve received the suggested references: “Would you mind If I talk to Peter, Fran and George as well”? Watch the reaction closely!

Always remember: You hire someone for his strengths not lack of weaknesses so tailor your questions about the strengths you are looking for and make sure that you weigh the feedback you receive according to what you really need. Example: Reference says: “Steve, in his role as Head of Sales, was too pushy in his general approach and sometimes went too fast for the Executive Team and the organization, so it was really hard to follow”. This is generally not the best feedback, but if your company is currently trying to attack a market, someone like Steve might be just the right fit for this period of time ;)

Here are some random questions that might be helpful for your day to day reference check. I usually use a mix of those and tailored ones to the specific candidate and role. Remember we’re trying to find inconsistencies, so use a good mix of questions for every reference check.

Some general questions that I find helpful:

What is your relationship with Peter like?

What was it like to work with Peter?

What was Peter’s management style like?

Can you describe a tough/very challenging moment Peter was in and how he has managed to get ouf it?

If you think about the time you and Peter have worked together, what’s the first memory that pops up your mind?

Would you say Peter is more a team player or does he excel more when he’s on his own? Can you give a specific example for it?

So, many of you probably made the experience of hiring someone that you would have stated as “a really promising candidate” upfront. But after four months into the job it turns out that the hire was actually a total fail, that your staff is thinking you’re an idiot for bringing him on board (even if they don’t tell you) and that you now have to pay the debts by firing that person and start a whole new time consuming hiring process again to reduce the mess you’ve just done to your organization.

Well, even though things like these sometimes just happen and can have many reasons, there are ways to dramatically reduce the likelihood. One of them is to have a strong hiring process in place with its most important asset, you can guess it – reference checks!

Reference checks have been quite common in the US and most of the English speaking countries ever since but are still fairly new to many of the European countries. This is due to cultural differences and different common practice that was established in each country years ago. So why changing that good old practice and do references checks? Here is why:

There is only so much you can get out of a certificate, a CV or an interview. Your goal is to get to know your new “promising candidate” as best as you can within a short period of time to make sure you don’t mess things up! Today, and especially in the startup scene, there’s a different need for different skills than there was when “written references” were the way you did it. Here are some classics of the “must have skills” for any kind of candidate that can only really be proved by a good reference check:

Interpersonal skills: Interpersonal skills for any kind of role matter much more these days than they did in the past (or to state it correct: people are more aware of them, they’ve always mattered). The interview situation is not the best way to find out whether or not your candidate is actually a great fit since some candidates are extremely good at selling themselves during an interview.

Integrity: Today, an intern can become the CFO. Maybe the company sucks and he only became CFO because he went to the same university as one of the founders. As Ben Horowitz likes to say in his amazing book “The Hard Thing about Hard Things”. “There are two kinds of companies in this world. One where matters what you do and one where matters who you are. You can either be the first one or suck.” You want to make sure that his previous company was out of the first category and that besides his great university connections, he actually was the best candidate for the role and that’s why he got it - because he knows shit, works hard and is an awesome guy. I’m not saying that hiring from your university environment is bad, but it shouldn’t be the only reason for a hire - which it is sadly in many startups these days.

Right kind of ambition: You are looking for people with the right kind of ambition. So people that love your idea, bring a “get shit done mentality to work” and that thrive to make your company successful. As a side effect it will help them grow their career - not the other way around.

Right kind of person: You are not looking for “the Facebook Head of Sales” or the “CMO from Google”. Even though those guys do an amazing job at their current companies, every company is different and every time in every company is different. You need to find the right candidate for your company at this time. So one of your challenges is to make sure that your candidate has the right skillset for YOUR COMPANY.

I guess I don’t have to tell you how big the impact of a bad hire can be for your organisation. Simply do the math. Really do it! Sit down and calculate how much time and money it takes you to get rid of the wrong hire and find a new person and tell the people that you are sorry rather than using this time to talk to 5 people for 10 minutes upfront. If you do that math correctly you’ll figure out that doing reference checks is going to be the easy, cheap and most efficient way for busy startups to get the right people on their rocket ship!

Saturday, October 03, 2015

About three years ago we thought that it would be nice to organize a little meetup for the founders of our still quite young but growing SaaS portfolio. The idea was that by putting all of the SaaS founders in one room for a day, we'd give them an opportunity to compare notes, share war stories and learn from each other. The result has been nothing short of amazing. After the meetup, many of the attendees told us that they've never attended an event which was nearly as useful as this one, and everyone left the meetup energized and eager to implement all the new learnings.

One of the reasons why the event is so effective is that it gives early-stage SaaS founders an opportunity to learn from later-stage SaaS founders and other SaaS experts who have already been through many of the challenges faced by the early-stage guys. Especially for founders from Europe and other places outside of the Bay area, this is a pretty unique opportunity to learn from some of the best people who've done it before. Therefore we're incredibly grateful to people like Mikkel Svane (co-founder & CEO of Zendesk), Jack Newton (co-founder & CEO of Clio), Paolo Negri (co-founder & CTO of Contentful), Olly Headey (co-founder & CTO of FreeAgent) and many others who participated in the first meetup in 2012 and keep coming to the PNC SaaS Founder Meetups ever since. Thanks guys, the startup world is a better place with you in it. :-)

PS: If you're a co-investor or friend of Point Nine and wondered why you didn't get an invitation this year: It's nothing personal, we've made it a portfolio-only event this time.